Any other college runners feel like they race every morning????

that 1 minute slower than 8k pace is interesting. Myt coach tells me most of my distance runs (6-9 mls) should be at a minute slower than mt 10 mile race time. I ran 10 mls in 54.15 last christmas, which is 5.25-5.30 pace. I ran 15.55 for 5k and 2.02 for 800 in summer. Would 6.25- 6.30 be about right pace for most of my runs. Anyone care to shed light on this calculation, or is it bs like the original posters' coaches' theory???????

I've run faster than you in the 5k and 800, but I run much much slower on my easy days. However, I also probably run more miles as I never really do 6 mile runs. I would say slow down but it is up to you.

to the original poster,

as i heard lydiard say in person, listen to your body. i know from experience that this is very difficult in college. i was nursing injuries constantly from hammering every day. you won't reach your potential in this system. if it is getting really draining and taking away from other areas of life, i would bail ship and train with other serious runners. my impression is that if you were even running 70-80 miles a week at 6:30-7:30 pace with faster stuff mixed in you would be amazed at the results. there is running success outside of college, can't stress that enough. good luck.

Two conclusions after reading this thread:

1) Most posters on letsrun are thwarted collegiant runners (present company included) who blame their lack of success in college on their college coach.

2) There is no one best way for everyone to train.

My own personal feeling is that most DI college coaches run everyone hard. There are usually 5-7 guys on the team who thrive under this system and become the nucleus of the team. These guys are probably the most talented.

The rest of the guys run themselves into the ground and never approach their potential. However, the coach doesn't care because these guys were never going to be studs anyway.

There are probably DI coaches who do try to individualize workout plans for the less talented runners. But I imagine it's a lot more work for little institutional gain (i.e. conference titles, national ranking, number of All-Americans etc.).

If you think I'm wrong I'd love to hear it.

Former Fighting Irish runner wrote:

Two conclusions after reading this thread:

1) Most posters on letsrun are thwarted collegiant runners (present company included) who blame their lack of success in college on their college coach.

If you think I'm wrong I'd love to hear it.

I think you're misguided about this.

A lot of coaches ARE to blame. Look at Wejo, founder of this site. Great success under John Kellogg in HS, goes to Yale and stagnates for 4 years, comes out and trains under Kellogg again and clips chunks of time off his 10K Pb.

The same can be said of a lot of coaches who only tend individually to the top 5. Look at colorado in RWTB. Wetmore has a great system for making champions, but it clearly doesn't "pain him" to see a number of them injured as Brad Hudson described it paining him to see any of his athletes injured.

Preston B,

I think we're in agreement.

Preston B,

I should have said "in the coaches mind" these are the most talented runners and "in the coaches mind" the less talented runners were never going to be studs.

Now, I agree that easy runs need to be easy. However, I've seen many runners get in shape that "easy" became about 6 min pace. But something Frank Shorter once told me was that when he was training with the olympic teams they always did their easy runs together, at the same pace, at the pace of the slowest runner that day. Just something to think about.

Preston B,

You're running with the garbage. You are saying that I, Daddy B, WeJo's legendary coach at Yale, caused him to stagnate. A gentle man might give you mulligans for that, I on the other hand will give you my nine iron in your head. You must be one of those schlunks from Samara's halloween squad. You don't deserve to have a capital B in your name like I do. This is the Heps!

And by the way, Weldon didn't run as fast in college because he was too busy getting the kind of action you'll never be able to imagine.

Daddy B wrote:

Preston B,

You're running with the garbage. You are saying that I, Daddy B, WeJo's legendary coach at Yale, caused him to stagnate. A gentle man might give you mulligans for that, I on the other hand will give you my nine iron in your head. You must be one of those schlunks from Samara's halloween squad. You don't deserve to have a capital B in your name like I do. This is the Heps!

And by the way, Weldon didn't run as fast in college because he was too busy getting the kind of action you'll never be able to imagine.

You're an idiot.

No...Daddy B won't go away. I might have gone into retirement, but I'm still here. You are a small man like Willie Shoemaker. You're probably not even fast enough to steal a boombox. I, however, am Daddy B.